Anna Palmer

20 December 201622:48

I now realise I have told everyone (who have asked me what I’d like for Christmas) that I would really love soap; homemade, natural, beautiful bars of soap. ‘Okaaay’, was my sister’s response. I don’t think she’s getting me soap. She did change the subject to bottles of wine and how you can never have enough. I’m probably being controversial here but I would have thought you could never have too much soap.

I can’t tell you the amount of times we have run out of soap (even the little bars I’ve saved from the hotels we’ve stayed at) and have found myself in the bath with only the last sliver of soap to use, which is now stuck steadfast to the soap dish. I’ve literally had to scratch the last bit off. Now that I have new bathrooms, I make sure this never happens (it’s amazing what a new bathroom can do to you), and I now have a lovely large glass jar that I place all my soaps in. It looks great, smells great and I now know when I need to replenish, so we never run out.

I was one of those people who would be given toiletries as gifts and would then put them away to use at a later date, except I only ever remembered them when I was having a clear-out, to make way for more Christmas gifts. It’s a bit like having bottles of champagne but keeping them for that ‘special’ occasion. The Trouble is, there never seems an occasion special enough (sorry friends). So the champagne gets left in the cupboard with all the others. That is, of course, if you are lucky enough to be given champagne. I don’t save the champagne for a ‘special’ occasion anymore, it now gets opened when a friend comes to visit, whoever that might be. The toiletries are now used more frequently and the bars of soap still sit proudly in my jar.

I look forward to a fresh-smelling, lather-inducing, bubbly 2017. Mind you, they might all be getting me wine…